Steel is a very useful boat building material, even in wooden boats. All of TOAD HALL's iron work is made from common mild steel, most of it scrounged! The mast step and the rotating tabernacle cuff are made from a piece of 1/4" X 4" steel pipe that I found in a dumpster. The same pipe makes the gooseneck bands, the spider bands and the hounds band. One quarter inch X 3" steel angle from a scrap metal yard made up  the Mizzen mast step and the stem-head. Black iron pipe fittings made up the gammon iron which was welded to the steel-angle stem-head. Black iron pipe also formed the cranse iron and the Mizzen Mast hounds band. Three-quarter inch black iron pipe made up the gooseneck and 1 1/2" X 1/8" steel made up the cabin fore structure and all of the companionway frames.

Something or somebody had to cut and fabricate all this steel before it was ready to be welded! A hacksaw was out of the question and I don't own any welding torches; (a friend does all my welding but to ask him to do all the cutting and fabricating would be an imposition.) Something else was needed!

I had borrowed my friend's 14" Hitachi chop saw on occasion but I needed something of my own so that I didn't have to be constantly running the chop saw back and forth, and also to have the tool on hand for immediate use when I  needed it. I knew that the carborundum discs used in the chop saw were readily available and that I could get them in the 10" size which would fit both my radial-arm saw and my table saw. I went to an abrasives company and bought one  to try it out. It worked perfectly and I have cut and fabricated all my heavy steel with these discs ever since.

Here's how to go about it.

Once you find a supplier for the discs (look in the Business-to-Business Telephone Directory under Abrasives) buy one or two which will fit your saws. Note that the arbor hole comes in various sizes. If they don't have one to fit your particular arbor, they will almost certainly have little adapters which size down the larger holes to fit smaller arbors.

You might be tempted to buy a larger disc than is designed for your radial; after all there is really no limit to the size of the blade that it can swing, just the size of the guard. Do not do this! I tried it and found that the larger (14") blade actually cut slower than the 10". The friction at the cutting surface is such that it can slow down the larger blade quite dramatically. Stick with the right size blade and use the guard. The photographs which accompany this article show the guard removed but that is only for photographic convenience.

Once you are ready to cut your first piece of steel, perform a little housekeeping. You are going to be making a LOT of sparks, so get out the shop-vac and clean up the surroundings of the saws to get rid of all the sawdust. Be diligent. Get out the sawdust from underneath the table of the radial and underneath the bench saw if you are going to use that. These sparks are hot and can cause a fire! Another precaution that I take is that I never leave the house after cutting steel until after at least a couple of hours have passed so that I can take a look at the surroundings and make sure that some errant spark isn't smoldering in some overlooked sawdust.

After all that is taken care of you are ready to start cutting! You will of course wear eye protection! A spark is just as uncomfortable as a sharp stick in the eye! Let's look at the technique for each saw in turn since they are quite different.

THE RADIAL-ARM SAW

The big thing to remember about cutting heavy steel with the radial is to LOCK the traveler. You DO NOT want to try pulling the motor and blade through the work as you would do with wood. This will immediately bog down the blade! Instead, lock the blade over the work and raise and lower the arm with the crank on the front of the machine. This gives you much more control over the speed of cut which in turn eliminates almost all of the binding.

It is also important to always cut down an edge. That is, if you have a steel angle such as in the first photograph here, you will NOT try to start the cut on the wide surface of the angle. This will also bog down the blade. Start the cut on the edge of the angle and move it down as shown in the photograph. Do the same with flat plate steel as well. The motor just can't handle a lot of extra friction.

Crank the arm down until the disc just contacts the material and starts to cut. You will soon see how quickly you can move the arm up and down to make the cut. Start out slowly at first until you get the hang of it.

As the disc wears away, (it will take quite a while; these discs last a long time and can cut a lot of material), you will start to encounter a problem with the body of the motor which can contact the work and stop all progress. Just turn the work over then and cut from the other side. If it is a large angle such as shown in the photograph, my procedure would be as follows:

1st cut--As far down one side as possible until the motor housing restricts it.

2nd cut--Turn the angle over and do the same on the other side.

3rd cut--Turn the angle over until it forms an upside down "V" and cut down through the web.

A word about disc position. Always try to position the disc so that it is cutting from the bottom of the disc and not the side, and when cutting the web, take it a little more slowly; there's a lot of material there. The photographs show the procedure.

THE BENCH SAW

This is simplicity itself. You handle it just as you would if you were ripping a 2 X 4. You will be astonished at how easily the disc marches through the 1/4" steel angle which is being cut in the photographs.

With the bench saw it will not be possible to get the material positioned at the apex of the disc because of the nature of the machine. Elevate the disc as high as you can and it will be fine!

You can use your rip fence, your mitre gauge etc., to do everything with steel that you do with wood; just a little more slowly!

THE RADIAL ARM PROCEDURE

Angle Ready to be Cut. Note Position of Disc

First Cut

Angle Flipped, Ready for Second Cut. Note Position of Disc

Second Cut

Cutting the Web

THE BENCH SAW PROCEDURE

Angle in Position to be Cut

Ripping Steel!